Chinese Classic Literature

The ancient classics of Chinese literature, called the 五经Wǔ jīng ‘Five Classics’ were established as long ago as early as the first century BCE. They were said to come from the preceding Zhou dynasty but some were heavily revised during the Han dynasty. The five Confucian Classics comprise:

Book of Changes易经Yì jīng. The Yi Jing is considered the first of the classics and although primarily a book of divination it says a great deal about Chinese philosophy. It is the commentaries on the text that are considered of most value. We have a full translation of this work and an online divination.

Book of History书经Shū jīng. Also known as the ‘Book of Documents’ this classic is more a miscellaneous collection of legends and some philosophy. It covers the time up to about 626BCE.

Book of Odes or Songs诗经Shī jīng. Another assorted collection of song lyrics up to about 600BCE from a variety of sources. The topics covered include love, marriage, victory celebrations, sacrifices and hunts. They set a moralistic tone and the early framework for later poetry.

Classic of Rites礼记Lǐ jì. There are three divisions within this rather vague assortment of documents. The 仪礼Yí lǐ ‘Rites and Ceremonies’ covers correct procedure at all sorts of occasion: marriage, burial, banquets, religious ceremony, Imperial audiences. The second division is the 周礼Zhōu lǐ ‘Rituals of Zhou’ which recounts the organization of administration in the Zhou dynasty which was held up as the Golden Age of sound government. The third part is 礼记Lǐ jì itself which is a collection of early Han dynasty writings some on general philosophy: 大学Dà xué ‘The Great Learning’ and the 中庸zhōng yōng ‘Doctrine of the Mean’.

Spring and Summer Annals春秋Chūn qiū. The annals are a list of important events in the state of Lu (now Shandong) attributed to Confucius himself. ‘Spring and Summer’ in those days referred to a whole year so a more accurate translation might be just ‘Annals’. The classic was so influential that the period of history covered is named ‘Spring and Summer period’ after the book.

An introduction to get you started with spoken and written Chinese. Explains key concepts and starts with the most common and useful words and phrases in Chinese.

As well as being important for their antiquity these books formed the bedrock of a classical education. Students would need to memorize every character in some of them in order to pass the Imperial examinations and so all scholars knew them thoroughly and would often make reference to them in poetry and other writing.

The five ancient classics were soon joined by other notable works. By the end of the Han dynasty the main work of Confucian philosophy the 论语Lún yǔ ‘Analects’ were added. Soon the 孝经Xiào jīng ‘Classic of Filial Piety’ joined it, as filial piety was at the heart of Confucian ethics. A very early dictionary, the 尔雅Ěr yǎ was added by the Tang dynasty and in the Song dynasty the second sage of Confucian philosopher Mencius was included with his main work the 孟子Mèng zǐ

By the Song dynasty the original five books had swelled to an unmanageable thirteen and so a short series of
四书sì shū ‘Four books ’ were introduced which contain the key parts of the whole corpus: Lún yǔ ‘Analects’; Mèng zǐ ‘Mengzi’; Dà xué ‘Great Learning’ and the Zhōng yōng ‘Doctrine of the Mean’.

One of the best resources to study the ancient Classics on the Internet is the CText project ➚, you can browse through the works and see English translations of many of them.

Language primers

Before being able to tackle the great classics the young student must have mastered the language. There are three ‘classic’ language primers learned by heart for hundreds of years: 三字经sān zì jīng The ‘Three Character Classic’; 百家姓bǎi jiā xìng ‘Hundred Names’ and the 千字文qiān zì wén ‘Thousand character classic’. We provide translations of the first two of these in this section.

One Hundred Names

Part of the Classical Chinese literature is the Hundred Family Names 百家姓Bǎi jiā xìng. The Han Chinese have a small number of family names, and one colloquial way to refer to the Chinese people is as the 老百姓Lǎo bǎi xìng venerable hundred surnames or just 百姓Bǎi xìnghundred names. The term refers to the 'ordinary working people' not the government or rulers. There are actually 504 names in this list of names which dates back to the Song dynasty.

Young aspiring scholars would learn these names by heart, it is one way to pick up a few hundred characters. Most of the characters have meanings other than just the name, so learning the names is more useful than would otherwise seem; for example qián as well as a family name also means money. The names are arranged in lines of usually eight names in rhyming couplets.

The names are not in order of frequency of the family names, although it is true that the more common ones are generally nearwer the top. Some of the most common surnames in China are Wang汪, Chen陈, Li李, Zhang张 and Liu刘. Towards the end of the list are some of the rarer two character family names.

Here is the full list of names, they are written using the modern characters rather than the traditional ones. The Chinese character(s) and Pinyin is followed by the meaning in English and after that different pronunciations of the character in other Chinese languages such as Cantonese, Hakka, Vietnamese, Malaysian. Because the spoken sound can vary it is important to track down the actual written character for the name so that family ancestry can be traced.

The Cantonese language or 'Yue' language is still spoken by over 50 million people in Southern China (Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong and Macau). Although the written form is very similar to mandarin the spoken language is very different. As many Chinese people have migrated to other countries around the world you will often hear Cantonese in Chinatowns and Chinese restaurants.

Many see China as an authoritarian society with the government firmly in control. Sometimes a news story comes along that shows that the government does not always get its own way. In Shanghai a 'nailhouse' has just been demolished that has stood in the way of a main road for fourteen years. A 'nailhouse' is a house where the owners have held out against developers usually in the hope for a better offer of compensation. There are a number of them spread over China. In this particular case the three story house was in the middle of an arterial four lane road in Songjiang district, Shanghai. The family eventually accepted relocation to a new flat, perhaps the noise got too much in the end. It is unclear whether they were given a better deal than they were initially offered.

Opium

The import of opium from India had a devastating effect on China. Although opium had been graown and used in China for centuries the import of huge quantities of the British controlled trade into Guangdong proved far more addicitive. It was the government officials who were most affected and even Dowager Empress Cixi used opium. Attempts to stop the trade led to two wars with Britain which China lost. Read More

One of China's most important exports was the respect for scholarship and learning. China was the first nation to appoint on basis of academic merit. Strict Imperial examinations were set up two thousand years ago and were the passport to a quieter life with a steady income.